Social Empires guide: what it is and how to play it online, free and with no Flash

What Social Empires is

Social Empires is a strategy and village-management game made by Social Point. You take charge of a small settlement and grow it into an empire: you gather resources, put up buildings, train an army and defend your land from the trolls that live around it.

It sits somewhere between city building and light war strategy. Crops take time to grow and buildings take time to finish, so a lot of the fun is planning what to build next while your villagers do the work. There is a social side too, with neighbors who lend a hand and other players you can challenge.

From Facebook to the browser: why it works without Flash

The original Social Empires lived on Facebook and needed Flash to run. Browsers dropped Flash and Adobe ended its support at the close of 2020, which left many games of that era impossible to open.

This edition from FB Games runs on a server of its own and works directly in Chrome, Firefox, Edge or Safari: no Flash, no plugins and nothing to download. You sign up with an account of your own, so Facebook is not needed, and your progress is saved on the server instead of in the browser.

It is free to play and the game itself comes in Spanish, English, Brazilian Portuguese, French, German and Russian. Keep in mind that it is an independent edition: it is not the official Social Point site, and progress from the original game is not imported.

How Social Empires plays: village, resources and population

You begin with a town hall and a few villagers. The villagers are your workforce: they gather the four basic resources of the game, which are food, wood, stone and gold. Crops, a mill, sawmills and mines help produce those resources, and what you gather pays for what you build.

Houses give you population, the room your village needs to keep growing. As your village grows you level up. Each level unlocks more buildings and gives you a new title, from Slave all the way up to Conqueror, so there is always a next goal in sight.

Troops and barracks: building your army

Each military building trains its own kind of unit. Barracks produce infantry, archery ranges produce archers, stables produce cavalry and workshops build siege machines. A temple and a market round out the village with support buildings.

Because every building covers a different role, a mixed army is usually a better plan than putting everything into a single type of unit. More buildings and troops unlock as you level up, so your army keeps changing as the village grows.

Trolls, towers and PvP combat

Trolls set up camps near your village and attack it periodically. Defense is part of the game from the start: towers and walls protect what you have built, so it pays to have them ready before the next attack and not after it.

Combat is not only against trolls. You can also attack other players in PvP and see how you compare on the ranking, which gives you a reason to keep your troops and your defenses in good shape.

Allies, neighbors and help from other players

Social Empires has a strong social side. You can send and accept help from allies and neighbors, and each bit of help speeds up a construction or a production, which adds up quickly when you are waiting on several things at once.

To meet people, the Round Table and the global chat are the places to look. Ask questions, find allies and trade advice with players who have already gone through the early levels.

Heroes, dragons, wonders and the Soul Mixer

Once the basics are in place, the game opens up. Heroes are managed from the Hero Altar, and dragons are raised in the dragon hatchery, where breeding goes faster with the help of your friends.

Wonders of the world, such as Machu Picchu, the Taj Mahal and the Colosseum, give your empire benefits. The Soul Mixer lets you fuse units, and a second city, the troll city, gives you more to explore beyond your first village.

Tips for new players

Keep your villagers busy: an idle villager is lost production. Build houses before population holds you back, and put up towers and walls ahead of the next troll attack. Accept help from your neighbors and ask for it in return.

Cash is the premium currency. You get 1 for every level you gain and more from the daily bonus, so remember to claim it. You can also make a voluntary donation by opening a ticket from the support button inside the game, but the whole game can be played without spending anything.

When you want the details of a specific building or screen, the official how-to-play guide is at empires.fbgamesweb.com/how-to-play.